Euskal Oiloa Chicken Forum

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Long Day but we got our pig!

We spent from 8am til 11:00 pm in the truck driving to pick a gourmet Hampshire pig lovingly raised by Chitaquarrot from ACE ad PSO. We saw her and got to have a chat over at the abbatoir in Mallorytown (near Kingston). Can't wait to do him up into sausages, bacon, ham, roasts, lard and crackling!

Did your boys go yet Glen?

So I have spent about 40 hours in a vehicle in the past week! Must be close to 3000km or 2000 miles All for the love of good friends and food!

Re: Long Day but we got our pig!

Claire you sure have had the traveling in this week. I am wanting a pair of Coronation's from Bella but I am not up to the drive after this past weekend, my bum is still numb

Bet they will taste great

CR I candled my *newest EO eggs* today and am absolutely tickled that they all look good except one I have 60 eggs in the two incubators and also looks like I will have some tiny purple chickens as well, three eggs look good

That's OK CR I am the biggest post hijacker, get off topic all the time

Re: Long Day but we got our pig!

gubi wrote:

Claire do you realize your web page is offline? It tells me "site not published"?

Thanks Stefan, yep, some of them are back up now.... they shut down my account, then reinstated it, not sure why but I have to do some work before I can get them all back up, I have the Easy Chickenry and the EOs up so far. What a pain. I have to get some other backup hosting in place as I don't trust them now. I'm working on the SLF one but we need to get this pork sorted out tonight when Nathan gets in, I have to got and do the set up now in the kitchen, but I can tell you, the likelihood of me eating roast pork crackling tonight is 100%

I have numb bum too now! It was all worth it though!

I think we all have trouble staying on topic, it's the all the neat stuff we do and want to know more about! I just say, use the Search feature and feel just a little guilty when I go off topic. Long as the thread started doesn't mind and I don't!

Re: Long Day but we got our pig!

Flat Rock Farm wrote:

CR I candled my *newset EO eggs* today and am absolutely tickled that they all look good except one I have 60 eggs in the two incubators and also looks like I will have some tiny purple chickens as well, three eggs look good

Excellent!!!! Wow, they really did well considering.... You are going to have quite a few fuzzy butts all together!

I'm setting somewhere around 45 over the next week - it looks like it will have to be a bit staggered with all the shipped eggs. It will be: EOs, RC Brown Leghorns, Wheaton Marans, and Orpington-mix swap eggs.

Re: Long Day but we got our pig!

CR sounds like you are going to have a nice mix of chicks Well along with my EO eggs in the incubator I have some Lavender D'uucles, bantam Blue Laced Red Wyandottes and Easter Eggs in standard and bantam and one cochin egg, so my brooder should be pretty colourful

Re: Long Day but we got our pig!

I still have to clean out the inside of the new bators before I can fire them up. I have flats and flats of eggs. I hope to get my eggs in really soon.

My back is killing from leaning in and cleaning out the fridges for all this meat and all the moving heavy brine pots and tubs of meat, Nathan's hurts just from leaning and cutting! What a pair...all to be forgotten when we get to savour this stuff!

So we got chops, tenderloins, ribs, sausage meat, ham and bacon cuts and 10 bags of tender souvlaki kebab meat, frozen with the lemon, garlic, oregano marinade in.... We even managed to get a one of the bacon cuts as a slab of the English bacon cut with the back and streaky bit too, and lots of belly streaky flitches for bacon. Heaven! The bacon will be even better than last time with less fat.

We baked up some skin fat last night (yum), roasted the bones for stock which smelt torturously good and made up the ham and some bacon brines (the one from the Self sufficient life by John Seymour), some are dry rubs we make up today. And we have about 5 solidly rectangular dish washing up bowls full of meat/fat for sausages, I bet we'll have 80 pounds of sausage!! And another half tub full of fat for rendering too. I guess the crockpot gets a workout today! I'll wait and see how much we need for the sausages then render the rest, as there wasn't that much fat. The chickens will get the leavings from that. Better get on and let the chickens out first!

Re: Long Day but we got our pig!

There is a place near Listowel in Ontario that does wild boards and "bronze age" pig, a hybrid wild boar and regular domesticated piggy. Waiting list is years!

Still not done yet! It took the two of us 6 hours on Friday night to cut the pig up, then about 18 hours yesterday, grinding 80 pounds of meat and fat, and made about 50 pounds of sausage, we finished at 4 am (5 am thanks to Daylight savings time). We still have 20 more pounds of sausage to stuff today (skins are soaking), but have been sampling as we go and it is absolute heaven! Bacon and hams are made up too. We have been taking of the highlights! Only another 2 hours of stuffing and maybe an hour or two of wrapping/weighing.

I have 4 pounds of rendered lard (filtered through coffee filters and we need to go to town (again) to get some cheesecloth for the last 2 pounds or so, as there's more organics at the bottom of the crock pot. We roasted bones have about 5 gallons of exquisite pork stock to freeze, and make soup out of.